01-22-2018, 08:06 PM
(01-22-2018, 03:54 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: The militias of the American Revolution were responsible to elected governments and vice-versa. Today's private, politicized militias would chafe at the idea. Private, politicized militias not responsible to elected officials are a bane of democracy. This is as true of fascist Blackshirts or Commie militias often essential to the overthrow of elected democracy and the imposition of tyranny.
Maybe those private, politicized militias aren't quite as much a joke as you think, should they ever become competent enough to challenge elected government. After they aid in seizing power on behalf of their cause they become the enforcement of the undemocratic regime -- and enforcers of the new Establishment.
Today's partisan so-called militias are mostly a joke simply because they are so partisan. They are not a threat to the government, and will not be so if the government shows the illusion of loyalty to the People.
Bets are off if the militias are racist. If some group perceives another as inherently inferior and rights / equality are ignored, things can get bad. In the Jim Crow era, for example, blacks were not allowed to join the militia, and the right to bear arms was taken from the People, given to the militia. Some cling to the Jim Crow interpretation even to this day.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.